Organic physical or mental illness can come upon anyone, anytime, as a result of genetic predispositions, exposure to pathogens, organic weaknesses, weakened immune systems, chemical imbalances or trauma.

Illnesses tend to be named according to the organs and systems of the human body which they affect. If the organ affected happens to be the brain, the illness is labeled a "Mental illness." This is unfortunate. "Brain illness" would be a more accurate label, as is, for example "Stomach ulcer," "Heart failure" and "Lymphatic cancer."

Mental (brain) illness means that the brain is experiencing thoughts and feelings that are unpleasant, inappropriate and uncontrollable surprises, because chemicals are present in greater or lesser amounts than normal due to organic disturbances within the physical substance of the brain. It could properly be defined as organic dysfunction, like heart failure or liver failure.

Psychological dysfunction is NOT due to organic disturbances within the physical substance of the brain. It is not organic dysfunction. It is a disorder of both emotion and cognition ( the mental faculty or process of acquiring knowledge by the use of reasoning, intuition and perception). One of the brain's many jobs is to create these intangible experiences of cognition and emotion that only we can perceive. Every other organ of the body evinces something that anyone else can see, measure and experience if they want to. But other people can only see the RESULTS of our cognitive processes and the RESULTS of our internal emotions. If any our underlying processes are impaired, other people will see addictive, obsessive, compulsive, self-destructive behavior, thoughts, choices or emotions and an inability to consistently learn from experience: which is the definition of psychological dysfunction.

There are two ways of addressing the problem of dysfunction. Unfortunately, #2 is the most common.

1) By the application of a normal, healthy, rational thought process:

A) If the symptoms (experiences) are unpleasant, find their causes.

B) Address the causes in order to modify, improve or eliminate the symptoms.

OR

2) By the application of an abnormal, unhealthy, irrational thought process:

A) Focus exclusively and endlessly on the symptoms.

B) Refuse to acknowledge or consider the existence of causes.

While mental (brain) illness can appear without warning and without any history, the development of psychological dysfunction always has a history and an environment; no child acquires any degree of dysfunction in a vacuum. The family system sets the stage and the child acts out his or her part in the drama. The history begins before birth and the play in which each and every child performs is unique, unlike any other ever written.

Rarely does a family system intentionally hurt its children; however, circumstances within a family system often motivate children to explain unpleasant things for themselves. Every child reacts to the reality of their own environment and their own experience in that environment. If that reality is in any way confusing, uncomfortable, frightening or painful, children will come up with their own explanations as to what's happening and why and, more importantly, why it is happening to them in particular. Those explanations will necessarily be based on fantasy, not reality; after all, reality is the problem. Those fantasy-based explanations, along with others, will eventually become fantasy-based beliefs, which will eventually become fantasy-based convictions, which will eventually influence the rest of that child's life in the form of fantasy-based cognitive thought processes, fantasy-based beliefs and fantasy-based emotional states. Thoughts or feelings based upon fantasies help us escape and deny reality, not face it and deal with it.